Joya: AIR / Martha Hipley / USA

“I arrived at Joya: AiR after two whirlwind weeks in Lisbon for the Disquiet International Literary Program. I am writing my first novel, and I hoped that I would survive the gauntlet of Disquiet’s fiction workshop with enough spirit to make the most of my time at Joya: AIR for reflection and revising. The combination was perfect. Joya: AiR provided a calm, nourishing space: fresh air and sunshine, long morning runs along the trails and dirt roads, hearty meals with other artists whose own work and concerns about the world felt so aligned with my own. I drafted and revised for hours each day, overflowing with energy and fresh ideas.

My novel, New Work, is inspired by my own experiences as a working artist in Recession-era New York City. Before turning to fiction, I made work as a painter and installation artist, and experimented with mixing traditional media and new technology for over a decade. As a writer, I’m interested in how artists work and survive in economies that are hostile not only to their creativity but to their base human needs. The urban life that is considered essential to a career in the arts — for access to education, patronage, and collaboration — is also often a marginal and violent one. It felt strange and poetic to dive deep on these themes while enjoying the serenity of Joya: AiR.

The novel begins by following a young artist’s assistant whose life spirals out of control when the performative violence of art begins to blur with a real, lived violence in her own hands. At the end of my time at Joya: AiR, I shared a reading of an excerpt from the first chapter:

Lou Best, at one time, made a name for himself by making strange, hulking metal enclosures and beating them with an aluminum baseball bat until he was tired. Now that Lou spent most of his time on the couch or leaning out a window with a cigarette, strung out on pills or whatever else was available when the pills weren’t, Anna would make them herself and then hit them with a bat as best as she could. The kickback of the metal clanging on metal had spun her muscles into ropes over the two years she had worked in Lou’s studio. A certain kind of wealthy person liked to buy the sculptures and put them in their garden or their foyer.

“I’m leaving now,” said Anna. She slipped out of her work jumpsuit and boots and pulled a thin black slip of a dress over her underwear. She kicked on a pair of scuffed ballet flats. She knew by now that Lou was a thousand miles away, stuck in some memory of Midwestern expanses, or whatever bleak thing she would have to type up into an artist’s statement whenever he managed to finish a piece. She also knew that Lou was gay in the special way that only his generation was, and only in the big cities — a kind of pure homosexuality between those before who felt obliged to be straight first and her own generation who felt obliged to sleep with everyone. Part of what she liked about the job was knowing that it was maybe the first job she hadn’t gotten because someone wanted to see her naked.

“I’m leaving now,” she said again. “Do you need anything?” She fished through her canvas bag for her phone and her iPod.

Lou rustled and grunted. His dog, asleep on the cement floor next to the couch, rustled and grunted too. Eventually, the dog would want to piss and would nip at Lou until he took it out and walked it home for dinner. Anna untangled her headphones and picked out a new song, a French band — a new one, the song called “Love in Motion,” but so smeared with synth and distortion it couldn’t be about anything but sex.

“Bye!” she yelled as she opened and then slammed the heavy warehouse door behind her….

Martha Hipley

Martha is a writer and filmmaker from Baltimore, Maryland, living in Mexico City since 2018, working in both English and Spanish. Her fiction blurs the line between the familiar and the strange, where horror, suspense, and humor converge, and mundane details blend seamlessly with the fantastical. Through horror and suspense, she explores how identities shift under societal pressures—how bodies mutate, resist, and decay. Humor plays a crucial role in her work, creating space to confront the uncomfortable truths and violences of everyday life.

Simon Beckmann4 August 2025